Hampstead disappoints on lack of chemistry, plot

WHEN it comes to prime real estate, it doesn't get much tonier than Hampstead, the leafy north London neighbourhood where billionaire financiers, rock stars and titled landowners rub shoulders with the merely wealthy. Residents will attest that much of its appeal stems from Hampstead Heath, a public park and ancient woodland spread across 320 hectares of urban landscape.

For two decades starting in the mid-1980s, the Heath was also home to a reclusive vagrant who lived in a tiny shack hidden away in the woods. He was dubbed Harry the Hermit by the press and his improbable story was the inspiration behind Hampstead, a film that might be described as Notting Hill for the silver-haired set. That 1999 Richard Curtis rom-com starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts told the story of a bookstore owner who, improbably enough, crosses paths with a Hollywood film star.

Hampstead, directed by Joel Hopkins and written by Robert Festinger, tells the story of the equally improbable friendship between an American widow living at the edge of the Heath and a crusty sourpuss living in a makeshift hovel there. He grows his own vegetables, bathes in a nearby pond and catches fish in a small lake. When his solitary existence is interrupted first by a gang of thugs and then by the aforementioned widow, all fiction breaks loose.